Back in December I had hoped to be able to get this blog going once again but it just has not happened.

Due to personal and financial issues I am officially pulling the plug. As I stated in the very first post, the blog was always about me. There were never any advertisements here and no attempt to monetize the blog. Think of it as old school BBS mentality. I’ve spent a little over $500 hosting it these last 4 1/2 years so it was always a money losing issue. I basically did it because I enjoyed it. At this point I just do not have the motivation or desire to continue.

If you are interested in purchasing the following domain names, please contact me with an offer.

switchedtomac.com
switchedtoapple.com

Thanks and best wishes to the two people who might be reading this post. Last one out please turn off the lights.

Carl

It’s hard to believe it has been a little over four years since I started this blog. Moreover, it is also a bit shocking when I realize that I have not posted to it in almost a year! Life can be like that sometimes. You get busy with work, family, life, etc. and before you realize it a substantial chunk of time has passed. I suppose the old saying “life is what happens while you are busy making plans” holds true like so many similar phrases we hear in our life.

A lot has happened in the last year and so even though it is still December, I wanted to do a year in review post. I was at Macworld once again this year working the booth with the 1Password crew and let me tell you that being stuck in a booth for all of Macworld vs. being an attendee are two completely different things. It was a lot of work and a many hours a day on your feet. The upside was that we needed some Macs for the booth and renting them is practically the cost of new ones so a deal worked out where I ended up with two brand spanking new loaded 24″ iMacs. I realize that I have railed against the new iMacs in the past for their terrible keyboards and mirror screen but I have grown comfortable with the glossy screen and it looks awesome as long as lighting conditions are favorable. I also picked up a new Airport Extreme base station even though the flying saucer version is still in service as well. Later in the year I finally ended up with an iPhone. The 3GS is very nice and having the network connectivity available everywhere makes it much more useful than an iPod touch. Sadly, AT&T’s rates are not the greatest and this will become a fancy iPod very soon.

I’m hoping to have a special deal coming up soon for those that actually make it here so be on the lookout for that.

In January of 2006 I purchased and setup .Mac (now MobileMe) and wrote a post about the value proposition of .Mac. I continued to use it until earlier this year when the value just wasn’t there anymore. I was only really using the iDisk and syncing features and the syncing had become so unreliable that the price greatly outweighed the few benefits I was getting. The iDisk was slow and a bit unreliable as well so I did not renew my .Mac account this year.

It is a bit sad as MobileMe still has a LOT of potential. Unfortunately, potential and every day use do not go hand in hand. So I was without syncing and was using this site’s storage to FTP files to share across my Macs. That is until I found:

Dropbox is everything you would want iDisk to be and more. It’s fast, powerful, simple to use, and as the Dropbox sites says “Works like you do”. The first thing you do is go to http://www.getdropbox.com

• download Terror by Night

and download the Dropbox application. Setup a Dropbox account (free for 2 Gigs) and you’re in business. It really is that simple. Dropbox creates a special folder on your system and anything you drop to this folder gets synced to your Dropbox. It is encrypted with AES-256 so prying eyes are out of luck. Your Dropbox is always available on your Mac even when you are not connected to the internet and its contents are available to your from any web browser when you are away.

But wait, there’s more…

Download and install Dropbox on a second Mac and you have instant syncing at your fingertips. For example, I recently moved my 1Password, TextExpander, and LittleSnapper

data files to my Dropbox. I did the same thing on the laptop and any changes I make to data on either Mac gets propagated to the the Dropbox and other Mac. This happens nearly instantaneously with no scheduled syncs needed.

Even more… Did I mention Dropbox kicks ass?

Dropbox even does version histories so if you accidentally delete a file on your Dropbox you can use its “virtual time machine” via the web interface to restore them as needed. You can also set up public folders to share with your friends and family or share files to everyone.

Dropbox is so fast and simple you’ll be scratching your head wondering why Apple’s offering is so bad in comparison. “It just works!” is 100% correct. I highly recommend it. If you need more than 2 gigabytes of storage you can upgrade to 50 gigabytes of storage for $9.99 a month.

I don’t usually write posts that sounds like commercials but Dropbox is that exciting. Try it and find out for yourself.

Yesterday Apple announced that Steve Jobs would not be doing the keynote at the upcoming Macworld in January and that it would be their last Macworld. There has been a lot of media about this and most of it seems to defend Apple’s decision and attempts to elaborate on why this happened. As of now there I have seen four main points being raised and I think that all of them are off the mark.

1. It costs too much for Apple to participate at Macworld for very little return

IDG, the parent company that puts on Macworld Expo every year has a sales office at the show and a lot of the exhibitors contract for next year’s booth during the current show at this office. I was there last year and commented that we would like to have that big booth in the middle (Apple’s location) and I was told that it costs $1.6 million for that spot. I replied “No problem, we’ll take it” only to be told that it was reserved for Apple and that we couldn’t buy it for $1.6 million or any amount of money. Apple has a lock on the center of the exhibit floor. I’m guessing this will be available for the 2010 show though as Paul Kent has stated that the 2010 show is already a go even without Apple in it. Let’s say that the cost to deck the booth out with the big screen and furniture they already own along with the signage for the new products and such costs the same as the booth and that would out it at $3.2 million. It is a Monday through Friday show but lets include the preceding and following weekends for setup/prep and teardown and assume Apple has to pay some overtime to their hourly employees who already get paid during the week whether they are at Macworld or in the office, hire some security guards, and reimburse some travel expenses even though it 40 miles from the Apple campus. Let’s say that costs another $800,000 for the week. For good measure, lets throw a million dollars on top of that pile for miscellaneous and come up with $5 million dollars. Maybe I’m a little low or high but I would say that is a fair guess of what it costs for them to participate for the week.

For the quarter ending September 27, 2008, Apple reported revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion. That’s 1.14 billion for 3 months or 1,140 million dollars. The cost for the expo participation would be .4% of one quarter’s profit. So is money really the issue here? I don’t think it is a good argument and the numbers do not support it. Even if I were way off on my calculation on how much it costs to exhibit and it is $20 million instead of $5 million then we are still talking 1.6% of one quarter’s profit! I’m not an accountant so feel free to check my math.

It’s not about the money.

2. Big trade shows are dying

I won’t argue that big shows like Comdex and the like seem to be dying off. However, Macworld Expo is not really a big general audience trade show. In terms of trade shows it is very unique in the fact that it surrounds one company. Although Microsoft was a big player at Comdex the show was never Microsoftworld Expo. The show was never about a celebration of all things Microsoft. Microsoft was just another player in the commodity based PC world. Shows like Comdex fail because commodities do not generate excitement and buzz. Who wants to go see a show with a bunch of cheap PC parts with no community around it.

Moreover, this is a local event for Apple. It is in their backyard! People commute daily longer than the distance from Apple HQ to the Moscone center where Macworld is held. It’s like a huge birthday party every year for Apple where they are the guest of honor and celebrated by their adoring friends and fans. I don’t really consider that a trade show. What Macworld Expo has in common with a trade show is that they have an exhibit hall and conference programs. The similarity ends there. Macworld Expo is more about community. The once a year gathering of the Mac faithful and Apple’s biggest fans. It is a concert with Apple as the main act on center stage.

Macworld Expo isn’t your typical trade show

3. Macworld forces Apple into scheduling their product releases around the show

The simple fact here is that it does not. Yes, people have come to expect big announcements at the Expo and I’m fairly certain Apple has helped accommodate this by timing releases around the show, but they also release products and have events outside of the show. If this was really the issue at heart then all Apple would have needed to press release is something like this:

“We’re no longer going to time our release around Macworld Expo, but we’re still coming to party and have a great time with our supporters.”

Some people would be a little disappointed but it would not be a huge deal. I’m sure if Jobs got up and did the keynote without announcing a single new product then people would still show up and stand in line for hours to see it.

Apple can release products whenever they want.

4. “Apple Stores: They’re like mini Expos!”

Oh, but they are not. Jason Snell jumped on this one too and if you look at pure numbers then I could see how you might buy into this line of thinking. Apple says that they get 3.5 million people a week through their Apple retail locations and that this is tons better than the 40,000 or so people that show up to the Macworld Expo once a year. However, here’s a big point that is being missed: those 40,000 are a tiny subset of a larger community. For example, a local Macintosh User’s Group (MUG) may have 100 members with only one of those attending the Macworld Expo. Its the most passionate fans of Apple that show up to the show every year. They return and spread the word about all things Mac to a much larger community including those at Apple retail stores. Guy Kawasaki understood this type of evangelism. Apple seems to be missing this. Perhaps they need to pick up and re-read Leander Kahney’s Cult of Mac book.

Apple Retail stores do not create the raving fans than Macworld Expo does.

If all these speculations are wrong, then why did Apple decided to pull out Macworld Expo? The simple answer is: I don’t know. Only Steve Jobs and those in Apple really know the reason but I think it is a mistake. It is never a good idea to shun your most hardcore raving fans and there will be some consequences to to Apple’s decision.

Will there be a Macworld Expo after 2010? Maybe.

If so, will it be a smaller event? Probably.

Has Apple made mistakes in the past? Yes.

Time will tell.

I’ve been using one Microsoft Mouse or the other since I started using a mouse with a computer. Yes, there was a time when a computer did not have a mouse included! (Not true for Macintosh though) I paid roughly $100 for my first mouse and it was a Microsoft bus mouse that required the installation of an expansion card in your system so that you would have someplace to plug it in. This pre-dated Windows 3.0 so there really was not a lot of uses for a mouse in the DOS world. However, I am pretty sure I was the first kid on my block to have a mouse. When I switched to Mac I did use the Apple Mighty Mouse for awhile but when it did not work with World of Warcraft it found itself abandoned in a drawer and replaced with one of Microsoft ones I had laying around. So when it came to buy a new mouse recently, it was a fairly tough decision to abandon what I had used for so many years. Ultimately, it came down to the Microsoft Mouse software for OS X which I had become disgusted with over the last several months. Every time the battery in the mouse got low it displayed a dialog box on the screen every 30 seconds or so. Clicking on “remind me later” / go away had no impact. If I was working in another app and not paying attention, literally hundreds of these would be created on top of each requiring as many clicks to get rid of them. I could tell when this happened because it started having an impact on system performance. Immediately replacing the batteries was the only solution.

I arrived at Best Buy on a mission for a non-Microsoft mouse since I didn’t want to deal with the Microsoft software any longer. After a lot of simulated mouse activity and button clicking I decided on the Logitech MX Revolution. Of course it was the most expensive one which is something I am noted for picking in any situation. However, I use a mouse a LOT and decided the $100 would be money well spent. Uncharacteristically, I never bothered to do any research before going to look. After all, a mouse is a pretty personal thing when it comes to feel and comfortability. I liked the ergonomics and features of the MX Revolution and still do. However, installing, configuring, and testing after installing the Logitech Control Center left me less than impressed. Scrolling seems jerky, unpredictable, and appeared to have a built in delay at times. I noticed odd behavior in some software and started googling. The culprit was identified as the LCC software. A visit to Logitech’s forums confirmed this and I found myself surrounded by a lot of pissed of Mac users there. Apparently, the LCC software causes a ton of problems and generally just works poorly. I could just dump it and use the built in OS X mouse features but I just bought a mouse that has 7 buttons and 2 scroll wheels which wouldn’t be configurable by the standard OS X control panel.

Enter Steermouse to the rescue.

Steermouse is a 3rd party advanced mouse driver for OS X. It lets you customize all the buttons of the MX Revolution, assign functions or keyboard shortcuts to button or scroll wheels, create scroll actions, launch applications, and even has feature t bring up the application switcher. Even cooler is the ability to map all of these features differently per application! So I can have the tilt wheel switch between tabs in Safari while manipulating the horizontal scroll bars in iTunes for example. The ability to customize the mouse on a per application basis is a seriously cool feature. Of course, I am forgetting the most important thing about SteerMouse: It works great! Unlike the totally worthless LCC software, SteerMouse will have your mouse kicking up its tail in glee. You can try SteerMouse free for 30 days and a license to continuing using after that period is $20 which is well worth it in my opinion. If your current mouse software is leaving you frustrated or wanting, I highly recommend that you go download SteerMouse now.

A ton of people on the Logitech forums also had success using Steermouse to eliminate their issues but did not feel it was fair that they had to pay for a 3rd party driver to fix their issues. You can add me to that list as well. However, one can rant and rave to Logitech until they are blue in the face (Logitech doesn’t seem overly concerned) or they can accept the fact that the included software is junk and move on. Personally, I’ll chalk it up as a learning experience and be glad that I found the capable SteerMouse software to get me back in business. I cannot say with 100% certainty that I’ll never buy another Logitech mouse again, but is very unlikely. However, all is well that ends well and SteerMouse was the means to that end.

A new “application” appeared in Apple’s App Store today debuting at a mere $999.99. What does this incredible application do one might ask. Well there is the rub. Basically, it has two “features”. First, it displays a screen like this:

Finally, the author touts: “pressing the (i) on the main page” yields a “secret mantra ” that MAY “help you to stay rich, healthy, and successful.”

I am not going to name the application as it deserves a lot less attention that it is going to receive. However, I’m curious as to Apple’s role in this.

First, the way the App Store works is that all applications must be reviewed by Apple before being added to the store. Second, Apple gets a 30% commission on sales of all applications in the App Store. This means that Apple has not only reviewed and posted this ridiculous pile of dung, but they are willing to take a $300 cut off any sales. The author of the application is equating this to “art” and I supposed that will be the loophole used to justify the ridiculous price of a screenshot with a quote on the back.

Personally, I think Apple’s credibility is on the line with this one. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Dave Teare has been touting Merlin Mann’s Zero Inbox philosophy for quite some time now and while I have always agreed with him in theory I’ve never quite been able to take the full plunge. However, a recent post over on 43folders clued me into my reluctance. I have mail dating back to 1998. I used Outlook2Mac to transfer all by mail from Windows when I switched to Mac and I am just generally bad about throwing mail away. The idea of not being to find that 10 year old message just eats me up. So I did like a lot people do and created over 65 folders and filed my messages away as neatly as possible. Being that I was a former Lotus cc:Mail user in the corporate world I have been used to the idea of mail rules for a long time too. Over the last couple of years I created 50 or more of those to help me automatically file tons of messages into all those folders too. Of course this brings me back to the zero inbox issue. Since I could not bear to simply delete the mail and insisted on the folder filing it was difficult to keep an empty inbox when I was just making a quick mail run but did not want to spend the time to do the organization. So of course, I left them in the ever growing inbox.

Until a few minutes ago…Enter the Peanut Shells folder

I created this folder, selected all the others, pressed Command-A to select all the messages, and dragged them to Peanut Shells. I then deleted all the empty folders. In a nutshell, Merlin’s statement:

Never organize what you can simply discard; and if you can’t discard it, throw it onto one big pile.

helped liberate me from my madness. Its so simple it is scary. I can create smart mailboxes at will, search any time, and generally have Apple Mail do all the work freeing me from all the organization tasks. Plus I have one big pile I can throw all the messages I cannot bring myself to delete onto. With the peanut shells pile all setup, I proceeded to triage my inbox like a man with a cause. Surprising it took less than 10 minutes with most hitting the shell pile. End result:

Inbox Zero!

For all the praise that Apple has heaped upon them for their innovative designs I would think that they would spend a little more time in the area of ergonomics. I recently wrote about what I didn’t like about the new iMacs and one of the things I attacked was the crazy new keyboard that I absolutely despise. Truth be told, I was not that thrilled about the keyboard that came with the “white” iMacs either. The keys were a bit stiff and spongy and had a tendency to stick. This was particularly noticeable to me when I used the arrow keys to navigate. So while the layout was fine, I never found myself feeling overly satisfied with the feel and use of the keyboard. Then again, I come from the “old school” and my favorite keyboard of all time was the original IBM branded AT keyboard. It weighed 100 pounds and sounded like a little boy dragging a stick down a wooden fence when you got going on it but that keyboard was pure bliss in my mind. The keys were spring loaded as I figured out first hand when I took one apart years ago and all the springy things went flying. (I actually got it back together!) I’ve basically used an old IBM keyboard most of my computing life and did all the way up until I switched to Mac.

Somehow I managed to run across a 3 year old TidBits article by Adam C. Engst about the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard and it piqued my interest in replacing my Apple keyboard. The Tactile Pro mentioned in the original article has actually been updated to the Tactile Pro 2.0 model that is currently available. After sitting on the fence for a long time I decided to try one and purchased one from SmallDog Electronics a couple of weeks ago. The keyboard uses the old Alps key switches which are not exactly like the original IBM key mechanisms but have always been recognized as a close second. After using the keyboard for a few weeks now I can absolutely say that I like it a lot. If you’re a bit old fashion when it comes to keyboards, I recommend that you check it out.

The Matias is almost the exact same layout as the factory Apple keyboard with 2 subtle differences.

1. F16 is gone. The Matias uses the old method of grouping the function keys in sets of 4 with a little space in between each group. As a result it gives up the F16 key. No loss for me.

2. The spacebar is slightly wider which results in the Option keys being smaller. The Option key is just slightly smaller than a regular key as opposed to the elongated Control and Command keys on both the Apple and Matias keyboards. So far this hasn’t been an issue for me.

Pros:

I can type faster on this keyboard and it feels more fluid and easier to use. The keys have travel and response. No stickiness and I can get on a roll!

It has all the special symbols printed on the keys so I that I can see that I need to use Shift-Option-K for the special  character or Option-G for the © symbol. This is nice when you need that sort of thing. However, it take a little bit of getting used to the extra text on the keys when you first get it.

Has a power button for the system on. Not that big a deal if you have an iMac but could be very nice for Mac Pros or Minis.

Moves a USB port to the front if you desire.

Cons:

No Caps Lock light – This may bother some people who need the light to let them know when they ARE TYPING IN ALL CAPS.

Uses 2 USB ports if you want to use the USB port on the keyboard. However, it is USB 2.0 unlike the Apple keyboard which is USB 1.0. (slow) Although I have this listed as a con, I also have it listed as a Pro because essentially it allows you to “move” a USB 2.0 port from the back to the front. You’re welcome not use it all in which case you are losing the USB 1.0 port the Apple keyboard gave you.

You don’t want to use this in the library. It’s noisy. This doesn’t bother me as I am used to this with the old IBM keyboard. All my favorite keyboards have been noisy. Maybe that should be my litmus test in the future.

Bottom line is that I am glad that I got this keyboard. Apple should have spent more time studying keyboard ergonomics as opposed to how cool it looks or how thin it is.

I wrote an entry about Hazel earlier this year and how much I love it. Today only, you can get 20% off the regular price because of Noodlesoft’s participation in the MacSanta promotion.

Also up today are Fetch which is an FTP client with a cute and lovable mascot (I use it more than TRansmit now just because of that dog) and MacGourmet for storing all your recipes.